Solid as a rock
Better than is good
Picked up from the local Ebay for a small payment and a 5 minute bike ride. A blotter of thick paper printed with the Underwood advertisement on the front. From the style of the graphic and the typeface I guess this is almost a century old.
On the scan those rays show as a greenish-brown, but that is actually printed in gold metallic ink. With the now faded orange and the deep red that would have been quite striking when new. Also fairly expensive to print I think. But at Hfl 325 the machine is not cheap either. It is hard to translate such amounts to modern context, but I guess this would today be in the range of the price of a car.
The advertisement text extolls the virtue of the machine; that it is very good. (Debatable if being better than good is a good thing, but we'll let that pass :) It does not have a differentiating feature or other unique selling point compared to other typewriters, it just claims superiority in being a typewriter.
It is the star, as it is in this radiant graphic...
Love it! Thank you for sharing.
ReplyDeleteY're welcome :-)
DeleteThe appeal of its commercial message still works too; is making me wonder how I could justify (and store) a U5...
(Well, maybe a 3-bank portable would be better :)
3 spot colors (Gold metallic ink counts as a color, although it's tricky to run and costs a bit more), and no close trapping. I suspect it wasn't very expensive. Very nice, though (:
ReplyDeleteAh, they fooled me then; giving the impression of expense!
Delete(Awesome. The net and its sphere really does have a vast pool of expertise in really every field - qed :-)
Nice find!
ReplyDeleteand a flat thing, I can store that :)
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